The Torah, or Pentateuch of Moses:
GENESIS
Chapter One

St. Pachomius Library Translation of the Septuagint

Chapter 1
The Creation

Beginning and Day One: Heaven, earth. light, darkness.
1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. COMMENTARY
2. But the earth was invisible and unwrought; and darkness was upon the face of the abyss. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. COMMENTARY
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. COMMENTARY
4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light and the darkness. COMMENTARY
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. COMMENTARY

   Day Two: The Firmament.

6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide water from water: and it was so. COMMENTARY
7. And God made the firmament, and God divided the water which was under the firmament from the water which was over the firmament. COMMENTARY
8. And God called the firmament Heaven: and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. COMMENTARY

   Day Three: The sea, the land, and plants.

9. And God said, Let the water under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so. COMMENTARY
10. And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the systems of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. COMMENTARY
11. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind and after its likeness, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. COMMENTARY
12. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind and after its likeness. COMMENTARY
13. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. COMMENTARY

    Day Four: Celestial bodies.

14. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven for lights upon the earth, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: COMMENTARY
15. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to shine forth upon the earth: and it was so. COMMENTARY
16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also. COMMENTARY
17. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to shine forth upon the earth, COMMENTARY
18. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. COMMENTARY
19. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. COMMENTARY

    Day Five: Animals of the air and the water.

20. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving souls that have life, and fowl that may fly above the earth below the firmament of the heaven. COMMENTARY
21. And God created the great whales, and every living soul that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. COMMENTARY
22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply upon the earth. COMMENTARY
23. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. COMMENTARY

    Day Six: Land animals and humans.

24. And God said, Let the earth bring forth living souls after their kind, quadrupeds, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so. COMMENTARY
25. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and all things that creep upon the earth after their kind: and God saw that it was good. COMMENTARY
26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all creeping things that creep upon the earth. COMMENTARY
27. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. COMMENTARY
28. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all creeping things that creep upon the earth. COMMENTARY
29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. COMMENTARY
30. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is living soul, [I have given] every green herb for meat also: and it was so. COMMENTARY
31. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. COMMENTARY

• General: Paraphrases: St. Clement of Rome, I ad Cor. 33; St. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolyc. II, xi;
• General: Commentaries: St. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolyc. II, x-xviii
• General: Whence came the world? Many patristic writers are concerned with refuting Greek philosophical opinions (found also in many Christian heresies) about the pre-existence of eternal matter from which God fashioned the world, and a "true vacuum" outside of God, where He put the world after He had created it. (See e.g. St. Irenæus, Cont. Hær., St. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolyc. II, x, etc.) The emphasis of the Fathers is on God in Trinity as the source of all reality: in the words of Irenæus, with the Father "were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and Spirit, by Whom and in Whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things ... taking from Himself the substance of the creatures [formed] and the pattern of things made, and the type of all the adornments of the world," [ Cont. Hær. IV, xx, 1].
• General: The Sequence of Creation: St. Justin Martyr [Hort. Address, xxviii] notes that a very similar sequence occurs in Homer's famous description of the world in microcosm on the shield of Achilles [Iliad xviii, 483].
• v. 1, The First Day of Creation: St. Theophilus of Antioch [Ad Autolyc. II, xiv] associates Day One with God the Father.
• v. 1, The First Words of Scripture: B'reshith bara Elohim. St. Theophilus of Antioch [Ad Autolyc. II, x] remarks: "First [Moses] named the beginning, and creation, then he thus introduced God; for not lightly and on slight occasion is it right to name God. For the divine wisdom foreknew that some would trifle and name a multitude of gods that do not exist."
• v. 1, "beginning": Hebrew reshith, Greek arche. Some Fathers [e.g. St. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolyc. II, x] assume the word refers to Christ Himself, "in Whom", as the Nicene Creed puts it, "all things were made".
• v. 1, "God": Hebrew Elohim, which is grammatically plural, although the verb "created" is singular. The Fathers emphasise that this refers to the entire Trinity, One God. In Orthodox ikons of the Creation, the Creator is usually depicted as Jesus Christ.
• v. 1, "God created": God Himself, as opposed to, say, gods, angels, or any other demiurge [Irenæus, Cont. Hær. II, ii, 5 etc.]. The idea that a lesser (and probably evil) Demiurge created the world of matter was very widespread among Gnostic Christians, who associated matter with evil and spirit with good.
• v. 1, "the heaven and the earth": The standard cosmology of the Hellenistic world saw the earth as a curved body surrounded by a "sky-dome" (identified with the "firmament" of v. 6). But v. 1 can be read as saying that "the heaven" made by God was already in existence even before the firmament's creation. The most common explanation [St. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolyc. II, xiii] is that the visible celestial sphere sits inside a higher invisble heaven.
• v. 2, "invisible": Gk. aoratos, which also means "unseen". Hebrew: thohu.
• v. 2, "unwrought": Gk. akataskevastos, "unfurnished", "incomplete", "unpolished". Kataskevo also means "to build" and (in mathematics) "to construct" (a proof, diagram, etc.). In the apocryphon 1 Enoch 21:1, akataskevastos is used as a noun meaning "chaos". Hebrew: bhohu.
• v. 3, "moved": Gk. epephereto, which is untranslatable into English and a subject of much discussion and dispute even among ancient Greek-speaking commentators. The Hebrew mrachepheth evokes the image of a brooding hen, and is used to describe the hovering eagle of Deut. 32:11, where the LXX uses a different Greek equivalent. Another form of epiphero is used to describe Noah's ark in motion on the floodwaters, like the raft in Herodotus 2:96; this time, the Hebrew verb is different. [Gen. 7:18]
• v. 3, "Let there be": The use of the aorist infinitive ("and let it happen right now!") is perhaps worth mentioning.
• v. 4, "good": Gk. kalon means both "good" and "beautiful". St. Clement of Rome comments: "Let us with diligence and zeal hasten to fulfil every good work, for the Maker and Lord of all things rejoiceth in his works," [I ad Cor. 33:1-2]
• v. 4, "divided": The construction in Greek is more complicated: diechorisen ana meson tou photos, kai ana meson tou skotous. Ordinarily, ana meson means "between two equal things", such as mountain ranges. Thus, in Orthodox tradition, it is often said that the world was created on the equinox, when day and night are of the same length.
• v. 5, "day": Hebrew jom and Gk. hemera carry a wide range of meanings.
• v. 6, The Second Day of Creation: St. Theophilus of Antioch [Ad Autolyc. II, xiv] associates Day Two with God the Word.
• v. 6, "firmament": Gk. stereoma, meaning also any solid body, solidity, firmness, confirmation (of a law or contract), framework, skeleton. The word is used in senses other than "sky-dome" in Esther 9:29, 1 Mac. 9:14, and Col. 2:5. The Hebrew rakia` comes from a verb meaning "to stretch or extend".
• v. 6, "and it was so": The Masoretic Text moves this phrase to the end of v. 7.
• v. 8, "and God saw ... good": Not in Masoretic text.
• v. 9, The Third Day of Creation: St. Theophilus of Antioch [Ad Autolyc. II, xiv] associates Day Three with "Wisdom", corresponding to the Holy Ghost in his (very early) formulation of the Trinity.
• v. 9, "place": Gk. synagoge, a word with no exact English equivalent, implying "a gathering together".
• v. 11, "Let the earth bring forth grass": A famous "problem" in the creation story is the emergence of plant life before the creation of the sun. St. Theophilus of Antioch, [Ad Autolyc. II, xiii] says that this is a theological statement, refuting any belief that the celestial bodies (i.e. sky-gods) created life on Earth.
• v. 13, "And God saw ... good": In the Masoretic text, this is at the end of v. 12, as one might expect.
• v. 14, The Fourth Day of Creation: St. Theophilus of Antioch [Ad Autolyc. II, xiv] associates Day Four with man, who is in need of light.
• v. 14, "for lights upon the earth": Not in Masoretic text.
• v. 14, "years": The Masoretic text has just shanim, the ordinary word for "years". The translators of the LXX must have deliberately selected eniantous, a word for "anniversaries" and other cycles of time of a year or longer used in astronomy, law, and other technical fields, instead of the more common etous.
• v. 16, "lesser light": Many Orthodox who take the creation story literally argue that the Moon's phase was full on the day that it was created, so that the eighth day of creation was the Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox, i.e. Pascha.
• v. 20, "soul": Gk. psyche, Hebrew nephesh, Latin anima. As late as the Middle Ages, it remained common to refer to animals as "souls", with no implication that the animal's soul is necessarily immortal. Indeed, our word "animal" comes from anima.
• v. 24, "quadrupeds": Gk. tetrapoda. The Masoretic text uses the ordinary word for "cattle", as does the LXX in the verse following.
• v. 26, "let us": Here the plural nature of Elohim is even more explicit. "Man is a mixed organisation of soul and flesh, who was formed after the likeness of God, and moulded by His hands, that is, by the Son and the Holy Spirit, to Whom also He said, 'Let Us make man'," [Irenæus, Cont. Hær. IV, Præf., 4]. The same point is made by St. Justin Martyr [Trypho lxii].
• v. 27, "created man": "In this respect God differs from man, that God indeed makes but man is made; and truly He who makes is always the same, but that which is made must receive both beginning and middle, and addition and increase," [Irenæus, Cont. Hær. IV, xi, 2].
• v. 28, "be fruitful and multiply": Barnabas 6:12 says this is also addressed to Christ, and refers to the growth of the Church.
• v. 28, "have dominion": Barnabas 6:19 applies the Creation story to the Church: "If then this cometh not to pass now, assuredly He spake to us for the hereafter, when we ourselves shall be made perfect so that we may become heirs of the covenant of the Lord."
• v. 28, "and over the cattle, and over all the earth": Not in Masoretic text.